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I have hijacked the Vault Vednesday series about FamilySearch’s Granite Mountain Record Vault, to introduce a storage “vault” in England.

The “vault” concerned is not in the side of a mountain, but buried deep under the Cheshire countryside. The DeepStore storage facility occupies a small part of Winsford Rock Salt Mine.

According to the website the salt mine consists of 110 miles of tunnels, which given the ongoing demand for rock salt, continues to grow. The storage facility occupies only 1% of the available space so there is still plenty of room for expansion.

The DeepStore website features a short Quicktime video tour of the facility, which gives you some idea of the scale of place, as well as the benefits of keeping your documents 500ft underground. Customers include the Cheshire Record Office and The National Archives.

A brief history of the mine is also included on the website as well as details on mining techniques. It is a shame that the mine does not offer tours to the general public, but then that would probably defeat the object of a secure document storage facility!

Lots more information about the salt mine itself can be found at the Winsford Rock Salt Mine website, including historic images and videos of the mining progress.